"Whether or not someone can become a blood donor is a matter of risky behavior, not sexual orientation."
Karl Lauterbach, German Minister of Health, announced on Tuesday that Germany would lift the strict restrictions governing blood donations by homosexuals since the 1980s and the start of the AIDS epidemic.
“There must be no hidden discrimination on this subject,” he explained.
The amendment to the law on transfusions that the Minister will present, quoted in the German press, now stipulates that “sexual orientation and gender identity should not be exclusion criteria”.
The modification of the law is announced for April 1st but the College of Physicians will have four additional months to draw up a new non-discriminatory directive.
Die Diskrimierung von Männern, die Sex mit Männern haben, muss auch bei der Blutspende endlich aufhören.
Wir haben viel zu wenige Blutspender, Blut ist knapp und rettet Leben.
Diskrimierung ist grundsätzlich falsch.
https://t.co/KQCmOwbr57
- Teacher.
Karl Lauterbach (@Karl_Lauterbach) January 10, 2023
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The law was relaxed in 2021
Restrictions on blood donation for homosexuals, dating from the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, were then motivated by fears that the risk of transmission of the virus through blood donation was particularly high among homosexual men.
According to the current directive of the German Medical Association, homosexuals can only donate blood if they have not had sex with "a new partner or more than one sexual partner" in the last four months .
The directive had already been relaxed slightly in 2021: before that date, the deadline was twelve months.
France lifted restrictions in March 2022
The lifting of these restrictions, denounced for many years by associations fighting against discrimination, is included in the contract of the coalition between Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals in power since the end of 2021. “The abolition of discrimination is long-awaited and I am delighted that Karl Lauterbach is tackling it now, ”responded the ministerial delegate for the LGBT cause Sven Lehmann, to the newspapers of the Funke group.
“It is not sexual orientation or gender identity that should be decisive for an exclusion from blood donation, but only the individual risky sexual behavior of potential donors,” he argues.
Before Germany, many countries, such as France, in March 2022, Spain, Italy, Israel and England, have already changed their conditions of access to blood donation in this direction.
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